What made true love run smooth
by FPB
Summary: Draco Malfoy has a sister - who is unlike him in every respect. One Slytherin sees her and falls head over heels in love with her - just before someone else makes her suffer terribly...


WHAT MADE TRUE LOVE RUN SMOOTH, or BLAISE AND MALFOY'S DAUGHTER

"So you've got a sister?"

"Yeah."

"You never mentioned her."

"Nah."

"Draco Malfoy, one more one-syllable answer and I'll transfigure your nose into a dripping faucet and your hair into anvils."

"You'll try."

"Two syllables. You survive."

Both young men – boys, really – started laughing.

"She's two years younger than me, and she's at Durmstrang. Daddy didn't want me to come over here in the first place, he wanted us all to go to Durmstrang, and when it came to her, he put his foot down. She was Daddy's Girl rather, y'know," drawled Draco.

"You jealous?"

"Jealous? Naaah. She's nice. You'll like her."

........................................................................................................

"Like" was an understatement, thought Blaise, when the youngest Malfoy came to spend a few days with her brother. (There was some sort of national holiday wherever Durmstrang was.) Nothing as beautiful had been seen under the vaults of Hogwarts since Fleur Delacour's last visit. She had the pale complexion and golden hair of all the Malfoys, but whereas her brother's hair lay flat across his forehead, hers spread out in natural ringlets, framing a face of elven beauty, with high cheekbones, delicate features, and enormous eyes of an incredible grey-golden tint. She towered over her brother, nearly six foot without her heels (which however she wore very smartly), lean and long-limbed and astonishingly elegant. Blaise Zabini had always suspected that there was some sort of faerie blood in the Malfoys, and now he was sure. In the Muggle world, this girl would surely have become a supermodel. She was born to be _chic_.

In person, she was gentle and astonishingly naïve. Blaise wondered how she had managed to remain so among the arrogant and worldly-wise Malfoys. On the very first day of her visit, she tried to be friendly with the Potter-Weasley-Granger gang, with predictable results. When she turned to him for comfort, her eyes swimming with tears, after a hurtful remark from Ron Weasley, he made up his mind that he was going to marry her. He also made up his mind that he was going to bop the lout Weasley on the nose at the earliest opportunity – just to make sure that the message got through: nobody insulted Cleo Malfoy while he, Blaise Zabini, was around.

.....................................................................................................

Weeks before, Lucius Malfoy had come to visit his son Draco, and they had taken a long walk. Harry Potter, who saw them by chance, had been concerned to see the two blonde heads bent together, speaking quietly and earnestly. He could not but believe that they had some black purpose; but, for once, he was wrong. For once, what they were discussing had absolutely nothing to do with him, or with anything threatening. Even the Dark Lord Voldemort was not mentioned so much as once.

"...the point, Draco, is that I no longer trust her in Durmstrang. All the boys and all the lesbians there have got her measure. You must watch over her and make sure that the same sort of thing does not happen here."

"Yes, Father. I only wish I'd been at Durmstrang myself."

"Yes, or her at Hogwarts. But what's done is done. Only... well, let's see how she fits in here. If things go well, I'll have her transferred for good."

"Especially now..."

"Now, Draco?"

"Now that Karkaroff is gone. We no longer have as many friends in Durmstrang as we did, do we?"

"You misunderstand, son. Karkaroff was a grave disappointment. If he had done anything like his duty, Cleo would have been protected. As it is... I hate and despise him... but I can trust Dumbledore in this. He has eyes everywhere... But I don't want to be in debt to him. And that's why I'm telling you, Draco, my son: _look after your sister. Don't let them get to her_. If I'm to be in debt to anyone, I want it to be you."

And Lucius Malfoy left, the aura of fear and concern almost visible around him.

...........................................................................................................

Professor Flitwick, ordinarily the most cheerful and easy-going of teachers, was looking very angry. The limp forms of Ron Weasley and Blaise Zabini, both looking rather battered, floated ahead of him, held in a powerful enchantment, and still looking daggers at each other.

"Twenty points from Gryffindor, Mr.Weasley. And detention. No matter what you think of her brother, you should have treated Miss Malfoy with respect. She's a guest and should be treated as such. And she has nothing to do with your enmity with Mr.Malfoy."

Ron muttered something to the effect that no Malfoy ever born deserved respect (bowdlerized). "Twenty-_five_ points from Griffyndor, then. And _two days'_ detention. Let's see if anything can penetrate that pig-iron head of yours." Blaise Zabini snorted.

"As for you, _Signor_ Zabini – _fifty_ points from Slytherin, and _a week_'s detention." Blaise gasped. "If you had flown at Mr.Weasley in a passion, it would have been understandable, if not excusable. But you waited for a week till you could find him alone and vulnerable. That makes it deliberate violence."

"But Professor..."

"Not another word, sir, or it will be the worse for you. _Conosco benissimo le tradizioni di vendetta della famiglia Zabini_, but let me tell you, _vendetta_ is not a notion that Hogwarts recognizes or encourages. If you want to fit in here, don't even think of holding grudges or waiting for people behind corners."

"Yes, Professor. I won't." Neither Blaise nor Flitwick actually believed that; but Blaise was deciding to be more cautious in future, and Flitwick was thinking that he would be happy if Zabini did not actually resume his feud while in Hogwarts.

...........................................................................................................

Cleopatra Glory-of-the-Father Malfoy was really quite a silly person. She was sweet-tempered, but had very little by way of brains; a fact that was hammered into her at every lesson. It isn't that teachers were cruel with her: to the contrary, they treated her with a kind of heartbreaking patience that spoke volumes. She herself had come to understand what they thought of her, and had suffered terribly in her self-esteem. She thought so little of herself that she was not even aware of her amazing beauty; when boys (and a few girls) started coming on to her, she at first did not even understand; then she simply fell in with their desires at every opportunity, unhappy and lonely and lacking in foresight and in the cynical empathy with the bad desires of others that was a frequent Malfoy family trait. Her brother Draco, for instance, was always able to perceive when others had mean or selfish designs; she was not – indeed, she never thought of it, because thinking was too hard. And so it was that, at no more than fourteen, she had come home pregnant during the winter holidays. She did not even know who the father was.

Malfoy had dealt with the problem quickly and imperiously, in the Muggle manner, and thanking the fates that Muggle law now allowed – indeed, encouraged – the destruction of unwanted little accidents; he was old enough to remember when one had to risk blackmail by a corrupt doctor for the favour. He had then drawn from her daughter's memory the names and faces of all the boys who had taken advantage of her misery; and after that, it had been a very busy Christmas holiday. A couple of dozen boys had suffered from terrible dreams and frightful symptoms of disease, and a number of their families had received secret visits from Malfoy whose details they were never willing to disclose afterwards. If he wanted to, Lucius Malfoy was capable of spreading fear like a whole secret police force, and during those holidays he bent his whole power to establishing a belt of terror and nightmares around his heedless daughter; certainly nobody whom he reached would never consider taking advantage of her again.

But there were limits to what he could do. He could not openly threaten any and every person who wanted sex with his daughter, without making public the fact that he considered her easy prey; the view of her as a "Marge" – "she spreads easily" – was already too widespread. Besides, he wanted her married, and married with a marriage suitable for a Malfoy: he did not want to make her inaccessible.

The only thing to be done, it seemed, was to remove her from Durmstrang. Start again... start again elsewhere.

....................................................................................................

"So you think she fit in well in Hogwarts?"

"Yes, Dad. I think the other girls liked her okay... mind you, I'd let Pansy know that I wanted her treated well."

"The boys?"

"She made a hit, of course. But I made sure that I or Blaise were always with her... can't trust Crabbe or Greg Goyle with this sort of thing, they're too stupid. Besides, I think Goyle is just about panting for a girl of his own."

"Well, that would not be too bad, son. Sure, he's no golden boy, but the Goyles are rich, and above all a proud and pureblood family..."

"Believe me, Dad, you would not want Greg for a son-in-law. Sometimes he's hard to put up with, even as a friend."

"If you say so, son. The trouble is that there are so few real pure-blood families left..."

"Yeah, Dad. And some of them are Weasleys..."

"Don't remind me."

As Lucius was leaving, one thing his son had said came to his mind. He turned; he nearly called out to him. Then he thought better of it. His son knew his schoolmates best. If he had a future brother-in-law already in mind – and, looking back, Lucius Malfoy was almost certain he had – well, things might arrange themselves. He would wait and see

..................................................................................................

The main surprise that followed was that Cleo was not sorted into Slytherin, as the family tradition expected. The Sorting Hat cheerfully and immediately called out: _HUFFLEPUFF_! Gasps echoed through the hall, before a rather half-hearted salvo of applause rose from the Hufflepuff table; a salvo that however grew in power and volume as they saw her coming, tall, beautiful, gentle and nervous.

Draco sat at the Slytherin table, weathering the glances of his associates with a completely unmoved countenance. The truth is that he had dreaded something like this. He was far too snobbish not to hate the idea of a sister in Hufflepuff. However, he had to admit it was probably for the best. In Hufflepuff, they were used to people having to work hard to make the grade; they would not expect miracles from the poor kid. He did not like to think what Mother would say, though. She wanted the children to be in Hogwarts, near her; but not at the price of belonging to a house that meant social death in her set. She was, if anything, more class-conscious than either Lucius or Draco, and she was certain to regard this as a humiliation. But Narcissa was not stupid. She also knew why her daughter had to be removed from Durmstrang. And Hufflepuffs were notably decent... They were less likely than other houses to take advantage of her; certainly far less than the single-minded and unscrupulous male youth of Slytherin. So Draco sat, with an expressionless face and a hurricane of emotions and calculation and concern and snobbery whirling and raging behind it; and there were a few Slytherins who could see what that poker face meant.

..........................................................................................................

"It is extremely difficult to be certain."

"Caia Marcella, if it was an easy matter I would not have resorted to you."

"So you say, Lucius. But you should know that purity of blood is extremely difficult to evaluate in Italy. Each region has its own traditions, its own sorcerous classes, and widely different accounts of themselves."

"All right, so it's difficult. What is your view?"

"The Zabinis look and sound good. They are certainly ancient: local records trace them back to before 1230, and their own tradition that they are descended from the witches of Thessaly is at least not unlikely. Besides they are rich, and well-connected. On the mother's side, they come from a dynasty of diviners that claims to go back to the priests of the temple of Fortuna in Praeneste."

"Claims?"

"Yes, there is no written record to validate their claims – except their own family papers, and the difficulty of relying on those should be obvious. However, I can say one thing for certain: for the last five generations at least, they have made good pureblood marriages and there is no record of Squibs or any other serious variations. That's more than could be said for many English pureblood families."

"Well, Caia Marcella, I can see that I cannot pay you the promised bonus, but your fee will be deposited in the usual place. Thank you for your effort."

The incredibly aged crone, wrapped in shapeless pitch-black stuff, got up from her chair, with an ease that did not seem to agree with her wrinkled and bent appearance.

"Of course, Lucius Malevolus, you might also ask me about my descendants and whether they are good enough to be allied with the great House of Malfoy?"

"Your - ? Are you trying to tell me that the Zabinis are your descendants?"

"Dear me, dear me. Why should I? I'm just an old crone living at the root of a mountain with my old ravens and my old cauldron... Why should anyone think I have anything to do with the Zabinis?"

And she left, vanishing in a puff of dust, and leaving behind a very disconcerted and dubious Lucius Malfoy.

....................................................................................................

Two very similar conversations.

"...she's not like her brother. She's not even like Crabbe or Goyle, who are stupid and nasty. She is slow, poor girl, but she's nothing like nasty. She means well. She's nice."

"So that's why you keep helping her?"

"Why not? She needs help. And it's easy for me."

"Hermione, I'm not saying you're wrong..."

"You'd better not!"

"...but she's a Malfoy. Even if she's a decent soul, getting close to her means getting close to Draco and Lucius."

"I'll take the risk, Harry. And, Ron, I want her left alone. Understand? No mocking. No teasing. The poor girl doesn't deserve it. If you can't bring yourself to be nice to the daughter of Lucius Malfoy, just say nothing to her."

......................................................................................................

"Yes, Draco, she's not very clever. I don't care. I think she's nice and sweet and incredibly beautiful and I care for her."

Draco considered his friend. Except for being tall, nothing more unlike a Malfoy could be imagined. Blaise or Biagio Zabini looked more like an Arab than an Italian: swarthy, shovel-jawed, his eagle-beak of a nose sheltered by deep and dense eyebrows, with black hair in thick ringlets and smouldering black eyes, he could have passed for a Barbary pirate of old. His muscles were hard and in excellent training; he had always refused to play Quidditch, preferring the Muggle sport Athletics – he said it was a better test. He was intelligent, dedicated, a good friend, and a very bad enemy to have. The female half of Slytherin tended to look at him from a distance from under lowered lashes, as being intensely sexy, but also too visibly dangerous for comfort. Draco had long thought that he might be good for Cleo; and if he was dangerous, so what? She was the kind who needed a strong protector.

"Well, all I can say, Blaise, is that _I_ have nothing against it. It's not me you have to convince... just take it easy, and watch things develop."

..........................................................................................................

Two weeks before the Easter holiday, Cleo did not appear at breakfast. Hufflepuffs are loyal friends, and her absence was noted. Hannah Abbott was dispatched to look for her, and found her in the Hufflepuff common room, curled up behind a chair, crying her eyes out.

Draco had also noticed. Overcoming his natural distaste for the House of Losers, he went over to the Hufflepuff table, asked, and was allowed to follow Hannah. He had never been inside Hufflepuff House before in his life; but even if he had been interested, the sight of his sister, red with weeping and shame, would have driven it from his mind.

........................................................................................................

The rest of term was something of a nightmare. Cleo had to be persuaded to do the simplest things; she had to be coaxed out of bed and into the school robes, taken along to lessons, encouraged to pay attention and do her homework. Her friends looked at her in concern: they had never seen her so listless, so self-despising, so despairing. A strange kind of partnership arose between Draco and Hermione Granger: they still hated each other, but they would take turns escorting her to class, talking her through the day's lesson, trying to move her thoughts away from the grooves of despair in which they seemed to slide all too easily. Blaise did what he could to help, but felt rather out of things. Draco, after all, was her brother, and Hermione had the invaluable advantage of being a girl, admitted into special kinds of intimacy not open to boys. Blaise wanted to help, but did not know how.

........................................................................................................

"You should disown me, Dad. You're too good to me. I'm just stupid and thick and I don't deserve to be your daughter..." and the rest of her words lose themselves in sobs.

It was a horrible way to start an Easter holiday. Lucius and Narcissa were looking down at their broken and weeping child, black fury in their hearts. The person who had done this to their daughter had worse than taken candy from a baby; he had taken advantage of a helpless and defenceless person, not only for his own selfish pleasure, but actually for the pleasure of watching her humiliated and shattered and hating herself. And although the Malfoys had done the same thing, in many ways, to many people, they were still human enough to hate with a passion, with a deep and holy hate, the person who had so abused their vulnerable child. They were not, and probably would never be, enlightened enough to understand that the pains of others were the same as their own; but this anger at the exploitation and degradation of unresisting innocence was the closest that any of them would come to a sense of justice and morality in their lives. Narcissa looked at Lucius and Draco, and they understood. She reached out to her daughter's mind, and easily, delicately, like a woman opening a rose petal by petal, Narcissa opened her daughter's memories.

Still without saying a word, she turned to her husband. He joined her. They drew their brooms, and, leaving Draco to watch over his sister, flew out.

Over the land they flew like a thunderstorm, followed by raging clouds casting thunder and hailstones. They headed in a particular direction, their fury so utter and undisguised that more than one wizard and witch under their flight path perceived their presence and understood their purpose. They did not care: they wanted payback for what had been done to their daughter, and they intended that it should be grim and total. They followed a railway to a certain large town, and flew over their roofs, looking for a young man whose face and name they knew.

..........................................................................................................

Carson MacKenzie lived in a part of town where commercial streets were connected by many narrow and often smelly alleys. He was walking along one such when he spotted an old friend from school.

"Blaise! What are you doing here?"

"Waiting, MacKenzie. I was waiting for a rat."

"A... rat?"

"A rat. And now I've found him." Suddenly MacKenzie found himself pushed against the wall. "Wouldn't you say, _rat_?"

Slytherins are not, with few exceptions, stupid. Carson MacKenzie, in fact, thought himself quite clever; it was that, more than anything else, that had prompted him to take advantage of silly Cleo Malfoy, when the girl came to visit her brother – who sometimes was in Slytherin house, and sometimes not. And he was a remarkably good-looking young man, something like a young Steve McQueen, tall and debonair. That he was, behind the smooth façade, notoriously single-minded and self-centred, was well known, but it did not hurt his image in Slytherin, where these were qualities to be admired.

When Cleo had started showing her distress, Blaise had found himself practically cut out from contact with her by the curious new Draco-Granger alliance, and had easily guessed what had taken place. He realized that, until Draco found out who had taken advantage of her, he was as much under suspicion as anything else in Hogwarts with a penis.

But Draco could not be everywhere all the time. He had to eat; he had to go to classes; he had to sleep. And Blaise was single-minded. For a week or more, his eyes never left brother and sister, till he had found out the best time to approach her, looking casual, and without Draco realizing it. And so, one afternoon, with Draco busy with double Potions with the Gryffindors (the class was a favourite of his and he was highly unlikely to miss it), Blaise managed to be, quite by chance, in the Hufflepuff common room, chatting up Joanne, a Hufflepuff girl in whom he was popularly supposed to be interested. When Cleo came in (looking so pale and thin and bony that his heart twisted for pity within him), he found it an easy matter to question her.

Such an easy girl, he thought. So pathetically trusting and approachable.

"Carson just looked so nice, Joannie... He just..." And she dissolved into tears again. The details that managed to make their broken way between sobs hinted at a performance designed not only to make use of the girl's trust, but actually to humiliate her and impress her stupidity and contemptibility on her; a performance that hinted at some sort of sexual perversion in her seducer.

Well, thought Blaise grimly. I'm one person she won't regret having trusted.

He could do nothing while in Hogwarts – not with Flitwick having already marked him down; so he stored his name in the mental file marked for vengeance, and waited for the term to end.

..........................................................................................................

Carson MacKenzie, as we said, wasn't stupid. Perhaps he was not as clever as he thought, but he was surely not so slow as not to understand what Zabini meant.

"Was she your girl? I didn't realize that."

"She was not _your_ girl, rat. That's all that matters."

"So you're her protector." There was a sneer in MacKenzie's voice. "The Malfoys aren't enough to look after their dumb marge daughter."

"The Malfoys will be late on the scene is all, rat. And I have nothing to say to you." A grin spread over his face. "Command you, yes. Say to you, no."

Blaise went on calmly. "Ask yourself, rat: Why am I not trying to struggle against Blaise? Why am I not trying to curse or hex him? It's because you are already cursed. You were cursed before you left your hovel; with a nice little variant on the Imperius curse that is a speciality of my family. You can be perfectly aware and conscious, with none of the little side-effects of the ordinary kind of Imperius – and you will still do anything I tell you." He smiled, drew a switchblade from his back pocket, and flicked it open. "Anything." The sharp blue blade flashed in the dark.

"You are perhaps thinking – _take the knife, Carson_ – of the Muggle camera at the end of the alley – _drive the knife deep into your left arm, Carson_. Shouldn't hope for it if I were you – _cut a few slashes in your shirt, Carson_. Right now, it is only recording what I enchanted it to record – _place the knife against your crotch, Carson_ – which is that you got into a knife fight with a Muggle gang of teenage criminals – _gut yourself like a fish, Carson_ – and you are losing." Carson's last howl of horror rose into the air and slowly died into a gasping. "Of course, the other knife-boys will never be found."

"That was very smooth, with the Muggle camera. I hadn't thought of that," said a voice behind him. Blaise cursed himself; in his eagerness to finish the boy that was now bleeding to death at his feet, he had left his guard down. He turned – to find Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy smiling at him.

"I cannot altogether thank you, Mr.Zabini. I had my own plans for Mr.MacKenzie. But I found your performance most entertaining, and I think I learned something."

"Tell me, Mr.Zabini," broke in Narcissa Malfoy, who was looking with positive delight at the bloody sight on the pavement, "are you a knight errant who would go to this trouble for any young woman who was abused in your neighbourhood?"

Blaise's white teeth flashed in his dark face in a bright smile. "Hardly, madam."

"Then I take it that our daughter is something more than ordinary to you?" Blaise smiled ruefully and said nothing.

"I think Draco had something of the kind in mind all along, my dear," said her husband. "Well, son, when shall we have the wedding?"

Blaise's white smile flashed even whiter against his dark skin.


End file.
